Let That Shit Go, Literally (A Journey Through Addiction + Sattva Yoga)

Following up from a few months back when I shared my story about battling an eating disorder, I had mentioned something about transcending current addictions. Following the month in India, I’m now feeling called to share. Not because I’m fully healed, but because I’m positive I am not alone in this, and I sincerely believe that the more vulnerable we are, the more connected we can feel to one another. 

Upon embarking on this international journey and leaving my old life behind, a big component I wanted to leave in the past was that of drinking and smoking (weed). While still stateside, I admitted to a few close friends that I wanted to get sober but wasn’t quite ready. The comforts of 2-3 glasses of wine per night (most nights), plus an evening bowl to tuck me in were too great to imagine a life otherwise. 

While this may not sound like much to some (and perhaps a lot to others), I felt like it wasn’t really a problem… and, ironically, in just acknowledging that felt problematic. I didn’t think that the wine and weed were inhibiting my lifestyle much, if at all, but I felt some energetic loss in this unconscious behavior. 

Moreover, I was subtly aware that this wind-down wine behavior wasn’t a way to sustainably balance my energy. After feeling like I was giving, giving, giving in my meditation + yoga studio management jobs, the only tool I felt I had to receive energy at the end of the day was drinking wine… which is silly because alcohol is a depressant and, while the flighty buzz may temporarily feel nice, it ultimately took from my already-limited energy reserves.

It took at least a year to acknowledge that I actually wanted to get clear + sober, especially because I loved the feeling wine provided so much. Additionally, I was an active participant in a world that encourages drinking with every cultural event: celebrations, birthdays, funerals, sporting events, concerts, reunions, dinners, brunches, etc. Anything can be an excuse to drink, and I reverberated that idea.

Though I drank in high school, you could more often find me hanging out with fellow stoners. It wasn’t until college that I began to drink on a more consistent basis. This was around the same time that I realized living a life with an eating disorder wasn’t going to be convenient, especially in a dormitory environment. In reflection, I think I may have swapped one addiction for another: the dis-ease of being formerly distracted through an ED was traded for drinking and/or smoking most nights of the week with friends.

My story isn’t an anomaly. Many of us went to college, moved through some unconscious, albeit ‘fun,’ behaviors, and as we got older, we turned the pages on a wiser, new chapter, one filled with day-long hangovers, trite drunken mishaps, and less of an inkling to get sloshed as we once had.

However, some of us continued to drink regularly. In moving to NYC, I, along with many college friends and fellow colleagues, drank (what I would consider) heavily. Most weeknights included happy hour, where “just one, maybe two” drinks would easily turn into four or five-plus. Weekends filled up with birthday parties, downtown bar hopping, trendy clubs, bottomless brunches, etc. With the amount of stress that I think many of us felt at our high-pressure, often-low-pay jobs, no one batted an eye at the drinking culture we all were in.

It took leaving Manhattan and embarking on a health-conscious yoga journey to recognize that I wanted to scale back. Two years down this path, I realized the desire to be clean. And about one additional year later, I am here, writing this.

…

When I left for Bali in January, I knew I wouldn’t be smoking weed, nor did I think I’d miss it too much. Not only are narcotics punishable by death in Indonesia, I hadn’t been loving my relationship with weed ever since I traveled to India in 2017.

On my first journey to India, I met and learned from Tommy Rosen (Kundalini yoga teacher and author of Recovery 2.0) who educated me on how the pituitary gland gets dulled by smoking weed. The body then doesn’t know what natural medicine it needs, and it can’t tap into a higher level of consciousness. Following that awareness, I journaled, “The universe has a plan for me, and it involves no more weed. I almost think that would be the easier thing to give up.”

Upon arriving back in California with this knowledge in tow, and the favor of jetlag naturally putting me to sleep at 8:30p.m. and up at 4:30a.m., I felt ready to drop weed for good. Moreover, I felt inclined to cut back on drinking, especially as I took on new tools for my daily morning sadhana (spiritual practice).

“ADDICTION IS ANY BEHAVIOR YOU CONTINUE TO DO, DESPITE THE NEGATIVITY IT BRINGS INTO YOUR LIFE.” – TOMMY ROSEN

That was all fine and dandy for a few weeks… until I got word that a friend had passed away from the flu, I wavered in my commitment to Self.

There was nothing more I wanted to do than numb. I remember attending her funeral one morning in early December, and then heading to a nearby bar just after they opened at 11a.m., with a mutual friend, to have a couple beers and a whiskey ‘in her honor.’ I continued to numb the discomfort of the day by drinking with my neighbor, and then reaching out to someone I thought I would gain temporary comfort with, but also knew was part of a bad habit/cycle.

Logically, I’m aware you can only move forward, there’s no going back, so despite this reaction I know this setback was contributing to my evolution. I just required more tools and behaviors in places to help me transcend the grieving process, to not become victim to my denser state.

There’s plenty more that I’m not yet comfortable publicly sharing re: my 2018 (the highs and lows, the challenges and lessons), but essentially, I found myself burning out because I didn’t have a sustainable way to fill my energetic cup up… instead, I kept filling up my wine glass at the end of the day. And this felt like a clear problem, an obvious imbalance, and an unsustainable way to live.

So weed was relatively easy to let go of. I haven’t smoked since I left and have no desire to.

Drinking took a little while longer. In the first four weeks of being in Bali I drank five times, each time getting further apart from the previous. On the last night of drinking, I had a couple glasses of wine with a friend and when we went our separate ways I decided to stop and grab a beer to have back in the hotel. I let myself have one, and then two, and then three – just to observe myself while drinking. Was it all I cracked it up to be? Is it worth indulging in? Do I like myself more like this?

The answers were clear: No, no, and no. I was decidedly done, even while I was indulging in my last drinks.

I went the next two months without a drink, and it was much so easier than I could have imagined! Plus, I also felt great, super clear on multiple levels, and my traveling budget was pretty stoked on this decision as well.

In hindsight, I can see having an environmental change around me was key to recalibration. Personally, this shift would have likely come with a wide set of challenges if I was in the same environment where I felt the desire to numb from.

With much deliberation I decided to drink on the last night of trekking to Everest Base Camp with my group. It was fun, no doubt, to celebrate in that way, but moving forward I don’t think I would do something like that again (drinking to celebrate). I found that it opened up the potential for wanting to drink more afterwards and it’s just easier to set my standard as someone who doesn’t drink, versus someone who drinks occasionally.

This then gets me to my second trip to India, back to the same ashram I went in 2017, now for an entire month, rather than 1.5 weeks.

Within the first few days of the training, a lot of people were getting sick. Whether that was respiratory, nausea, vomiting, or, most frequently, diarrhea.

Admittedly, I was a little shocked by how many felt this way, especially because the food and water provided at the ashram are very clean and cater to westerners all year round. And then, I think we all soon realized that it wasn’t what we were eating, rather what we were processing that was making us sick.

There’s a lot of energetic work that happens in Sattva Yoga, and when we transcend barriers in our physical bodies, we shake up what’s referred to as “bio-memory.” Bio-memory is that which is stored in the body when we have a particular energetic experience with an emotion. And that shit gets sorted out when you’re doing lots of kriyas, breathwork, meditation, asana, and learning about your Self!

Needless to say, nearly everyone I met at the training had some degree of bio-memory to shake up (and shit out).

…

My first experience of feeling sick happened after we did a journey (one of the longer morning practices that weaves the comprehensive yoga tools together into a transformative experience) centered around unconditional love.

After an intuitively designed sequence of meditation and breathwork, the group of nearly 130+ people divided into small circles of seven. In each group we held hands, as one person at a time went into the center of the circle and looked, with total receptivity, into each of the circle’s eyes. Those encompassing the individual had one job: love the individual completely unconditionally, no holds bar. After acknowledging each other, the person in the center remained as the recipient and the six individuals placed their twelve palms on the person’s body. We all closed our eyes to send/receive love, so, so, so deeply.

The experience of being that person in the center was profoundly healing. Receiving these relative strangers’ unconditional love and just letting it shower over me, to feel the full potential of bliss radiating from them into my physical body, and down into the subtler dimensions of being… wow. Soul-shifting work. I sobbed and sobbed, while simultaneously smiling in bliss.

I REALIZED: THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG I COULD DO OR BE IN THAT MOMENT, EVERYTHING I AM, EVERYTHING THEY ARE, EVERYTHING THAT IS SIMPLY IS PERFECT.

The journey ended in lots of long hugs between one another. Deep connections were shared with people we may have previously passed judgments on, to people whom we already love so much, to people whom we may never talk to again. We were (and are!) all one. Such pure representations of love. Divine love.

This unconditional love journey happened to coincide with our first day off in a week, so I decided to take it easy and stay on the property, rather than going into Rishikesh town like many others did.

Part of me wonders if it was letting my body catch up to the energy work, but a larger part of me believes that it was this receiving and radiating unconditional love that shook up my bio-memory. I woke up sick the following morning and had to just let that shit go ;)

There’s another chapter of this saga I’d like to share, more specifically linked to my current transcendence through addictive tendencies that got stirred up in bio-memory at Sattva, but we’ll save that for the next post.

To be continued…

Big, huge hugs of unconditional love coming to you all! Thanks for reading along with me.

Let me know if you ever want to connect more about addiction, growth, or some tools I now feel equipped to share to help you heal and process… it’d be my honor to hold space and a pleasure to share with you.